It’s mid-October, and autumn here in Spain is well under way. Last weekend in the woods we saw tiny mushrooms. My writing programme is running. And I’m beginning to put things in place for November Academic Writing Month.
November Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) is an invitation to academics everywhere to make a push with their writing during the month of November.
This, when construed as another bit of productivity pressure, is a horrible thing.
But AcWriMo can also be a real opportunity to honour deeply-held writing intentions, and to connect with our courage, wisdom, and self-compassion while we’re at it.
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I will be participating in AcWriMo this year, on an extremely loose definition of ‘academic’ writing.
I will also be supporting others in their commitment to writing during the month, and that support is here for you if you want it (more about this below).
There are four main reasons why I’m really looking forward to AcWriMo, and why I’d recommend it to you too—especially if, like me, you are a writer who can hardly ever ‘write on command’ and who easily loses steam or courage even when working on projects you love:
- This can be a challenge on your own terms.
- It’s only one month.
- You can add weight to your intentions so they’ll be easier to remember.
- You can be real about the whole thing.
1. A challenge on your own terms
A challenge like ‘make a push with your writing during November’ can provide a clear way to direct your energies. This can be so galvanizing! I love being invited to step up; I think fundamentally all humans do, though of course it depends what for, when and by whom this invitation comes to us.
More than a dozen years ago, I was told by the dean of my faculty to step up my writing in order to save my tenure-track job. That did not have a galvanizing effect on me at all. When writing feels like compliance, my whole body rebels against it.
For AcWriMo, I go the other way: this is a writing challenge on my own terms, even an opportunity for defiance.
It’s not about producing words. It’s about taking a stance against not giving care and attention to what I want to give care and attention to.
This especially works well for pieces, passages or sections that have not been getting attention, for all kinds of good reasons, among them fear, limited energy, and the other priorities we all have.
For me, a half-written blog post about ‘survival culture in academia’ is on that list. Enough with not working on it! I want to work on it. This November, I’m looking forward to going back to it.
2. It’s only one month
We can’t expect ourselves to step up endlessly. It’s all too easy to feel such an expectation in the cultural air we breathe, but we can’t and shouldn’t aim to be ‘always on’. Just as trees don’t blossom or bear fruit all year round, our creative-intellectual energies need their fallow, ‘no-push’ times. Downtime is as important as uptime for any process of learning, creativity and growth.
I am not excited about any open-ended invitation to step up.
But one month is good.
Not too short, not too long.
Those boundaries around November Academic Writing Month feel helpfully protective. Between 1 and 30 November, there are plenty of days to make good on an increased commitment to your writing, even to take a risk and experiment with pieces or passages you’re not sure you’re ready to write. And—you are not asking yourself to sustain that intention for more than one month.
Knowing that it’s only one month can bring some ease to the nervous system. My half-written ‘survival culture in academia’ piece feels risky to finish, but the thought of giving it some good care and attention just for the month—well, that feels doable. I’m actually looking forward to it.
3. You can add weight to your intentions
The philosopher/anthropologist/sociologist Bruno Latour shares a lovely story in an essay about how some hotel owners in Europe used to attach extra weight to room keys so guests would remember to leave them at the front desk whenever they went out.
Previously, the owners had tried using notes (‘Please leave your key at the desk before you go out’), but that didn’t work nearly as well. Despite their best intentions, guests often forgot and walked out with the key in their bag or pocket.
With the added weight, though, they didn’t forget. They didn’t even have to try to remember—the key itself reminded them by its weight.
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You know how vulnerable even our most deeply held writing intentions often are to being displaced by other concerns and commitments, as well as by the unpredictability of everyday life. An intention like ‘I would really love to return to my piece on survival culture in academia’ can easily slip away in the midst of those constant pushes and pulls.
The bounded space-time of AcWriMo provides a good opportunity to add weight to your writing intentions.
There are all sorts of ways you can make your intentions visible to ourselves and, if you wish, to others. There are all sorts of things you can attach to your intentions to lower the strain of having to remember them.
I like weighing down my intentions by designing a goals, points, and rewards system for myself for AcWriMo, according to an approach I originally learned from Mirya Holman.
My design reflects what I care about, what I know is good for me, what I fear and what I enjoy. As long as I calibrate it well, it’s going to do what that key-weight did. I won’t have to remember or go against the grain to work on my survival-culture piece—my preparation will do a lot of the work.
I’m looking forward to having my design carry me, as a continuous, generous invitation into writing, throughout November.
4. You can be real about the whole thing
The final reason I’m looking forward to AcWriMo this year relates to kindness and self-compassion.
Nobody likes to set themselves up for failure, and writing challenges can be risky in that regard. I know the tender parts of me need some assurance that I won’t end up mired in shame and self-judgment if things don’t work out the way I would like.
I want to feel good about the goals I do meet, without feeling bad about those I don’t. Being real about the whole thing is key to this.
Who knows what November will bring, for me, for you? Maybe it’ll turn out to be a brilliant month for writing. Or maybe, for any number of reasons, we will barely get to working on the pieces and passages we wanted to make progress with, at all.
We can be real about that—not just ‘realistic’ in advance, but real as the month unfolds. The business development Sufi teacher Mark Silver calls this ‘compassionate accountability’, which means acknowledging the many good and valid reasons that we didn’t get to it today, and that our work on the whole takes longer than we thought. Compassionate accountability takes the unpredictability of life into account. It also involves not treating yourself as someone who makes excuses but as someone who balances multiple concerns, commitments and desires, and tries to do the best they can.
Holding compassionate accountability for ourselves during AcWriMo turns the whole month into a practice of honouring and caring for both ourselves and our writing.
I know that regardless of what I’ll accomplish, it’ll be a good challenge, and that I’ll emerge from it with my self-respect intact.
A resonant writing challenge
Those are my four reasons:
- This can be a challenge on your own terms.
- It’s only one month.
- You can add weight to your intentions so they’ll be easier to remember.
- You can be real about the whole thing.
I’m curious how they resonate with you, and what thoughts they evoke about AcWriMo, writing challenges or your writing life in general.
My minimalist package
Last year I journeyed through November Academic Writing Month with a small group of writers, offering them light design support and check-ins for witnessing and solidarity along the way. It was so connective and heartening!
So this year, I’m offering my minimalist package for AcWriMo again.
The package costs € 95 and includes:
- A template for setting and tracking goals and for rewarding yourself for meeting these goals, during the month of November.
- A design and Q&A session to help you set up your goals and points system—live via Zoom on Tuesday 22 October from 1-2.15PM CEST (also recorded).
- Weekly check-ins via Signal or email during November.
If you’d like this kind of support, I warmly invite you to join me and others for this upcoming round. The link to the booking page is here.
As always, whether you join or not, I hope there’s been something of use to you in the contents of this post.
Warm wishes,
Catelijne
PS: Enrolment for the Minimalist Package for November Academic Writing Month stays open until well into November, but note that the live Design and Q&A session with me is on Tuesday 22 October 2024. (If you sign up after this date, you’ll get the recording.)
